The Cyber Effect

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PROLOGUE

When Humans and Technology Collide

I

am sitting on a hard, cold bench. My back is against a concrete wall
in a police briefing room somewhere in South Los Angeles—­in a
neighborhood known for gangs, crime, poverty, urban decay, and,
twenty years ago, brutal race riots. It is 4:45 in the morning. I haven’t
eaten anything for hours. Not a wise move. My stomach is churning, a
combination of hunger, jet lag, and apprehension.
LAPD lieutenant Andrea Grossman begins the police briefing—­and
explains how, in an hour or so, a special task force will be arresting the
biggest human trafficker in the United States and one of California’s
“Most Wanted.” About forty law-­enforcement officers will be involved
in the operation, a team of experienced professionals pulled from the
FBI, Homeland Security, Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC), the
California State Police, and the LAPD. And then there’s me, the one
person at the briefing without a gun. Only sworn officers are allowed
to carry them.
Back in Ireland, where I’m from, it is rainy. The spring drags on,
gray and wet. I think about my cozy office in Dublin, my library, my
desktop computer, and my quiet academic life. Except my life is not so
quiet lately. Over the past decade, while establishing myself as a forensic cyberpsychologist, I have traveled the world to meet with other ex3

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perts in my field, conducted research, worked with law enforcement,
attended conferences, and given hundreds of talks, seminars, workshops, and presentations. The field of cyberpsychology is new and still
emerging, and each year it draws more interest. The sense of urgency is
escalating. I think most of us who work on the front lines can feel it,
along with a profound sense of loss of control. Our lives are changing,
and human behavior is evolving. As a cyberbehavioral scientist, I believe this is because people behave differently when they are interacting
with technology than they do in the face-­to-­face real world.
Some changes have occurred so quickly that it has become difficult
to tell the difference between passing trends, still evolving behavior,
and something that’s already become an acceptable social norm. In this
book, to make things simpler, I will be referring to face-­to-­face reality
as “real life” or the “real world” to set it apart from cyberspace, although I am fully aware that what happens there can be as real as
anything. New norms created online can migrate to real life. So what
happens in the virtual world affects the real world, and vice versa.
Whenever I am asked to talk about my work, I start off with the
formal definition. Cyberpsychology is “the study of the impact of
emerging technology on human behavior.” It’s not just a case of being
online or offline; cyber refers to anything digital, anything tech—­from
Bluetooth to driverless cars. That means I study human interactions
with technology and digital media, mobile and networked devices,
gaming, virtual reality, artificial intelligence (A.I.), intelligence amplification (I.A.)—­anything from cellphones to cyborgs. But mostly I concentrate on Internet psychology. If something qualifies as “technology”
and has the potential to impact or change human behavior, I want to
look at how—­and consider why.
Time is not on my side. My work is always in a race with technology. This presents a major challenge to how academics normally study
a phenomenon. As scientists, how can we possibly keep pace with the
tech changes we are seeing in our lives, in our behavior, and in our society? A good longitudinal study, which looks at human behavior over
time and allows a researcher to make conclusive scientific statements,
can take anywhere from a couple of years to a few decades. That’s several lifetimes in tech-­terms. And given what I’ve seen already, particu4

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larly the new norms that are rapidly being created due to an accelerated
form of socialization that I call cyber-­socialization, I don’t think we
should sit around waiting for answers.
The good news: Some aspects of Internet psychology have been
studied since the 1990s and are well known and documented. The effect of anonymity online—­or perceived anonymity—­is one example.
It’s the modern-­day equivalent of that superhero power invisibility. The
subject of some fascinating studies across many disciplines, anonymity
has an impact that cannot be underestimated. It also fuels online disinhibition, another important contributor to other effects. I have been
involved in a dozen different research silos, and have studied everything from organized cybercrime to cyberchondria, health-­anxiety facilitated and amplified by doing online medical searches, and the one
thing I have observed over and over again is that human behavior is
often amplified and accelerated online by what I believe to be an almost
predictable mathematical multiplier, the cyber effect, the E = mc2 of this
century.
Altruism, for example, is amplified online—­which means that people
can be more generous and giving in cyberspace than they are face-­to-­
face. We see this phenomenon in the extraordinary growth of nonprofit
crowdfunding online. Another known effect of cyberspace is that people can be more trusting of others they encounter online, and can disclose information more quickly. This leads to faster friendships and
quicker intimacy, but it also means that people tend to feel safe when
they aren’t. Due to online disinhibition effect (ODE), individuals can be
bolder, less inhibited, and judgment-­impaired. Almost as if they were
drunk. And in this less-­inhibited state, like-­minded people can find one
another instantly and easily, under a cloak of anonymity, which results
in another effect: online syndication. I will explain these cyber constructs and “effects” in detail in this book, and they are described in a
glossary of terms, but ultimately they will be fully understood and evaluated only by empirical science—­by undertaking intensive experimental
studies, manipulating variables, and identifying cause and effect. But
cyber isn’t a lab with white mice and levers. We are talking about a
complex matrix of human data that is manifested in a virtual context. It
involves painstaking digital forensic and cyberbehavioral detail.
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There is an expression, “God is in the details,” that resonates with
my work. Forensic science is the study of the physical evidence at a
crime scene—­fibers or bodily fluids or fingerprints. In TV terms, think
CSI. Forensic psychology is the study of the behavioral evidence left
behind at the crime scene, what we like to call “the blood spatter of the
mind.” Then there’s my area, forensic cyberpsychology, which focuses
on the cyberbehavioral evidence of a crime scene, or, as I like to think
of it, the cyber footprint. It was the great forensics pioneer Edmond
Locard, sometimes called “the Sherlock Holmes of France,” whose exchange principle put forth the basic premise of forensic science: “Every
contact leaves a trace.” (Your fingerprints are now all over this book.)
This is just as true in cyberspace. Almost everything we do online generates digital exhaust, digital dust, and digital prints. This digital evidence can help law enforcement investigate criminal behavior, whether
the crimes take place in cyberspace, across the world, or down the
street.
It was the pursuit of that kind of data that led me to Los Angeles. I
was conducting a study with the Specialists Group at INTERPOL, the
world’s largest international police organization, about youth risk-­
taking online and, hoping to accumulate data, I got in touch with
Lt. Grossman at the LAPD. We had met previously at a conference at
the INTERPOL headquarters in Lyon, France. I’d been impressed by
Lt. Grossman and her work in the field of cybercrime. When she agreed
to see me and discuss the INTERPOL project, I flew to California to
meet her team.
Police can be very skeptical about academics descending from their
ivory tower who are hungry for data but have very little understanding
of the nitty-­gritty nature of frontline law enforcement. So I was pleased
that Lt. Grossman asked if I’d be interested in getting some work experience with the LAPD.
“Of course,” I replied, assuming that she was talking about a type
of internship at her police precinct, where I would sit in on meetings,
but she had something a little more proactive in mind.
“How would you like to suit up and come on an operation?” she
asked, going on to explain that the identity and location of a trafficker
of child abuse images, videos, and other materials had been determined
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by using cyber-­forensics. Lt. Grossman thought this would interest me,
as an academic observer.
“Uh . . . ​
yes,” I stammered. “You mean, suit up, like S.W.A.T.?
When?”
“Tonight.”
My work involves the scientific investigation of behavior online—­
from the prediction of developing behavior, such as cyber juvenile delinquency (hacking), to profiling typologies for evolutions of criminal
behavior (cyberstalking). I explore machine intelligence solutions to
big-­data problems (such as technology-­facilitated human trafficking)
and intelligence amplification (I.A.) solutions to child-­related online
sex offending. This is all demanding work that I have been trained to
do and have learned to handle. But real-­world frontline police work?
S.W.A.T. takedowns? I have very little experience of that.
In my hotel room, later that evening, I dressed in black—­the forgettable, blend-­into-­the-­woodwork uniform of forensic experts worldwide. (Why hemorrhage data at fifty paces by wearing a pale-­pink
blouse to demonstrate that you’re feeling vulnerable, a splash of yellow
for optimism, or a pattern to make you appear interesting?) Then, at
3:30 a.m., I grabbed a bottle of water, went downstairs to the lobby,
and told the reception desk that a group of LAPD officers would be
coming soon to pick me up.
The concierge looked at me skeptically.
“I’ve done nothing wrong,” I assured him. “I’ve been asked to observe a mission. That’s all.”
That’s how I wound up here, before dawn, in an LAPD briefing
room. The weather in L.A. is always agreeable, so they tell me, but it is
unexpectedly chilly this morning. Fortunately I have a bulletproof vest
and a steel ballistic helmet to keep me warm.
“Resistance is always expected,” the briefing officer says. “If an officer goes down, step over them. Just keep moving forward. If you go
down, stay down.”
I glance at the briefing book in my lap. It includes directions to the
nearest hospital. If you go down, stay down. . . .
Faced with uncertainty—­and potential danger—­I adopt an attitude
that has served me well in life: Hope for the best, expect the worst. And
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that turns out to be a pretty good motto for almost any endeavor,
whether you are living in the real world or online. Each time we join a
new social network, download an app, pay a bill online, buy our children a new digital device, or meet someone on a cyber-­dating site, we
are faced with a steep cyber learning curve and can quickly encounter
new challenges and risks. Hiking up a sheer mountain trail to enjoy a
breathtaking view is one thing. Jumping off the summit to paraglide
down is another. Some risks are worth taking. Others are just unnecessary. Which is which? That is what this book is about.
“Let’s roll!” Lt. Grossman calls out. Twenty chairs slide back at
once. Boots stomp. Guns clank. I reach for my helmet and pause for a
second and think, not for the first time that morning, How on earth did
I get here?

Where Am I?
We are living through a unique period of human history, an intense
period of flux, change, and disruption that may never be repeated. A
seismic shift in living and thinking is taking place due to the rapid and
pervasive introduction of new technologies to daily life, which has
changed the way we communicate, work, shop, socialize, and do almost everything else. This moment in time is not unlike the Enlightenment (1650–­1800), when there were also great shifts in awareness,
knowledge, and technology, accompanied by great societal changes.
Enlightenment delivers new freedoms. And the new freedoms allowed online are heady, thrilling, and enticing to billions of people. The
concept of absolute freedom is central to the ideology of the Internet.
But can this freedom corrupt? And can absolute freedom corrupt absolutely? More freedom for the individual means less control for society.
Some changes have been seductive and incremental—­
and have
caused psychological norms to creep into new places. You barely noticed until, one day, suddenly you see a baby in a stroller being handed
an expensive smartphone to play with or you see a toddler expertly
swipe a touchscreen with a chubby finger. Or maybe you walk into a
shopping mall and notice a group of kids huddled together solemnly
looking at their devices—­and not one another. So near and yet so far!
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Or something might have hit you closer to home, like an increasingly distant and uncomfortable feeling in your relationship or marriage because your partner is spending hours alone with his or her
computer—­
chatting and cyber-­
flirting with new friends worldwide,
bingeing on Netflix, consumed by online shopping, or obsessed by the
plethora of pornography sites so readily available now online.
The Internet is omnipresent, always delivering rich, stimulating
content—­all day, all night, always on. Between the years 2000 and
2015, the number of people with access to the Internet increased almost sevenfold—­from 6.5 percent to 43 percent of the global population. At the Davos Summit in January 2016, it was announced that
more than 3.2 billion people are now online. In less than ten years the
number of cellphone subscriptions has grown from a little more than
2 billion in 2005 to more than 7 billion in 2015. The number of hours
people spend on mobile phones is escalating rapidly each year, jumping
an average of 65 percent in a two-­year period. The same study found
that mobile phone users checked their devices more than fifteen hundred times a week, and there are several apps that will count that for
you, if you need a little help managing your habit.
The number of minutes per day that you spend checking your phone
and scrolling through social media posts is not insignificant. To a researcher like me, who studies human behavior at the minute-­by-­minute
level—­in digital dust and footprints—­these minutes indicate how a person is living—­what they do and don’t do. This is called pattern of life
analysis, or how people live online. In the home, these minutes are not
spent doing other things—­reading a book to a child, playing with a
toddler on the floor, chatting with your family at the dinner table, talking with your partner before bed. When you are checking your phone
or spending time surfing websites, you are effectively in a different environment. You have gone somewhere else. You are not present in real-­
world terms.
Let me raise a question, one that has been fiercely debated by technologists: Is cyberspace an actual place?
My answer is unequivocal: Yes, it is. Cyberspace is a distinct place.
You may be accessing it from a familiar environment, like the comfort
of your own home, but as soon as you go online, you have traveled to
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a different location in terms of your awareness or consciousness, your
emotions, your responses, and your behavior—­which will vary depending on your age, your physical and mental development, and your
distinct set of personality traits.
Instinctively, we know this is true. Most of us have felt “lost” in
cyberspace and realized—­
as if waking from a dream—­
that we’ve
burned dinner, run late for an appointment, or forgotten to turn off the
sprinklers. This is due to the fact that, in the real world, most people
have learned to keep track of time effectively. Online, though, there’s a
time-­distortion effect. (Try this the next time you log on: Turn off your
clock display, and every so often test yourself to see how well you can
estimate the passage of time.) As complex as human beings are, and as
adaptable, psychologists know from a myriad of studies and research
that when an individual moves to any new location—­a new home, a
new school, a new city, or a foreign country—­his or her behavior will
change or adjust. One’s environment has a profound impact on one’s
physical bearings, something we know from work done in the field of
environmental psychology, an interdisciplinary approach that looks at
the interplay between individuals and their surroundings. And according to theories of development, an awareness of self comes through a
gradual process of adaptation to one’s environment. And as anyone
knows who has moved or traveled, it can take time to absorb and acclimate to any new location or space. It can take a while to get your
“sea legs,” as sailors who shove off from land to live aboard a boat
would say.
But many people deny the awareness that they’ve entered a new environment when they go online, so they remain ignorant—­and are
fooled by their sense that nothing has changed. They are sitting in their
own homes, surrounded by familiar objects, after all, and their bodies
are resting in the cushions of familiar chairs and sofas. In their minds,
they have not “gone” anywhere. But the conditions and qualities of the
online environment are different from real life. That is why our instincts, which were honed for the real world, fail us in cyberspace.
Naiveté and bad judgment about this environment can be evidenced
every day—­when we pick up a newspaper and see that a politician has
distributed photographs of his genitals to horrified strangers, when a
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celebrity rants crazily on Twitter, or when another sex tape goes
viral. Traditional authorities and support systems appear to be absent
online—­or they are just as confused as you are. As devices and gadgets
change, and technology changes, the cyber environment changes with
it, which impacts human behavior again. This causes upheaval to individuals, industry, finance, government, all of society. The more changes
there are, the more new situations arise, creating only more confusion.
Psychologists know that living in a state of societal change is easier
for some than others. But for most, trying to keep pace with recent
technological changes has been dizzying. While many people are still
finding their footing in this new environment, with all its new neighborhoods and new behaviors, there are many more changes yet to
come. This can only result in more new situations and more confusion.
One sure way of coping with a state of constant flux is to become
more knowledgeable about how the cyber environment affects all of
us—­how people, yourself included, may act there. Knowledge is power,
and it’s tremendously reassuring. A familiarity with the basics of cyberpsychology will help you answer the questions I hear all day, and would
hear all night if I were to never sleep and just read my email.
Questions like:
• At what age can my baby start watching digital screens?
• Is it okay for a toddler to play with an iPad?
• Is there a connection between online gaming and ADHD in

young boys?
• Should I allow teenagers to spend hours in the bathroom with
•
•
•
•

their smartphones?
Does technology contribute to social isolation?
Can real relationships be formed in cyberspace?
Why do people troll online?
Should I be afraid of “the Deep Web”?

Cyber is not just a transactional medium, for things like passively
viewing television or making a phone call. It is a highly interactive,
highly engaging, and highly immersive environment—­uniquely compelling and attractive to humans. Perhaps too compelling. What about
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your toddler who throws a tantrum when you ask for your tablet back,
or your teenager who screams when Wi-­Fi slows down, or your aunt
and uncle who seem to be in a constant state of tech rage (“The computer’s broken!”), or the fact that your grandmother on Facebook has
made lots of new online “pen pals” in Nigeria?
Cyberspace is full of place names—­social networks, forums, sites—­
and once there, we join up with a far larger group than we’ve been with
before, which also makes this environment distinct. There are now billions of people online. This has prompted a lot of new situations and
confusion. With such a wide array of new friends and contacts in your
life, it’s crucial to know more about human behavior—­and understand
how it changes online. Our instincts have evolved to handle face-­to-­
face interactions, but once we go into cyberspace, these instincts fail us.
We are impaired, as if we had been given keys to a car but not learned
how to drive. We need more tools and more knowledge. Because if you
spend time online, you are likely to encounter a far greater variety of
human behavior than you have before—­from the vulnerable to the
criminal, from the gleeful and altruistic to the dark and murderous.
My focus on cyber-­
forensics in my work with law enforcement
means that I witness both the best and the worst aspects of human behavior manifested online. I like to say that technology was designed to
be rewarding, engaging, and seductive for so-­called normal populations. But did anyone really think about how it would impact abnormal, deviant, criminal, and vulnerable populations?
Considering those risks is part of my work too.

How to Read This Book
We all know about the incredible benefits of the Internet. I could talk
all day about them—­the convenience, connectedness, affordability, creativity, altruism, educational and commercial opportunities, entrepreneurship, and cultural exchange. I’m pretty sure you are aware of these
things too. An army of marketing experts working for all the biggest
tech companies and conglomerates do nothing but dream up new and
better irresistible products and new and better ways to sell them to us.

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They are supergood at convincing us of the necessary features of these
gadgets and software and apps and touchscreens.
My job isn’t to criticize technology. Good science focuses on balance. If I seem to focus on many of the negative aspects of technology,
it is in order to bring the debate back to the balanced center rather than
have one driven by utopian idealism or commercialism. My job is just
to provide the best wisdom possible, based on what we know about
human beings and how their cognitive, behavioral, physiological, social, developmental, affective, and motivational capabilities have been
exploited or compromised or changed by the design of these products.
Technology is not good or bad in its own right. It is neutral and
simply mediates behavior—­which means it can be used well or poorly
by humankind. This understanding is fundamental to my work. This is
no different from how we regard automobiles and drunk driving. Any
technology can be misused.
One of my earliest influences was J.C.R. Licklider, an American psychologist and computer scientist who in 1960 wrote a seminal paper,
“Man-­Computer Symbiosis,” which predated the Internet but foretold
the potential for a symbiotic relationship between man and machine; in
fact, you could say he was the first cyberpsychologist. I read “Lick”
with amazement at his ability to gaze into the future with such clarity
and wisdom. Early on I was also drawn to the work of Patricia Wallace, who wrote The Psychology of the Internet, an influential academic book and popular success in 1999. Soon afterward, I became
aware of John Suler, a clinical psychologist and pioneer, the acknowledged “father of cyberpsychology,” who has been working in this area
since the nineties and wrote The Psychology of Cyberspace, first published as a digital book in 1996. John has really captured the essence of
cyber in his work and has explored the potential benefits and hazards
of cyberspace and characterized the way people tend to behave in the
online environment.

Just as I was embarking on my own study and research, I reached out
in cyberspace to John. This led to an exchange of emails, which led to

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an eventual face-­to-­face meeting at Rider University, in New Jersey, his
academic home. They say it’s hard to meet your idols. But in my case,
I just wish I’d worn the right shoes.
It was a grueling hot day, and John had just come from a lecture
when I arrived on campus. He wanted to stretch his legs a bit. “Let’s
walk while we talk,” he said. Then, with the air of a Socratic philosopher striding across the Acropolis, he set off at warp speed across the
quad. John is a tall man, and each stride meant about four hurried
steps for me. To prepare for our meeting, I had carefully considered
various cyberpsychological constructs that I thought we might discuss,
but I didn’t think it would happen outdoors in blistering heat, or while
I was wearing heels that were unsuitable for uneven terrain, much less
a forced-­march pace that would make a marine weep. In many ways,
all the rest of us are still trying to keep up with John.
Over the past decade, he has become my great friend and colleague.
Some of his groundbreaking constructs and observations inform a
number of the concepts addressed in this book. In recent years, I have
had the pleasure of meeting a growing group of like-­minded researchers worldwide, who share ideas with me and collaborate on studies. I
am thrilled to showcase an impressive body of work in the chapters to
come. Approximately thirty peer-­reviewed journals now publish an estimated one thousand articles every year on topics related to cyber­
behavior, a field that is expected to enjoy exponential growth in the
next decades due to the pervasive and profound impact of technology
on humans.
Like other fields of scientific endeavor, mine is a land of jargon and
caution. The behavioral sciences have been blindsided by developments
in technology to a certain extent. In the late 1990s colleagues of mine
referred to the Internet as a passing phenomenon. In the mid-­2000s
they said that people would never use online social media platforms to
communicate. Now fifteen years and billions of people later . . . ​a game
of catch-­up is going on.
Academics are great at finding complicated ways to not really say
what we mean. Our academic papers are littered with hedging adverbs
like arguably, plausibly, and questionably. We seem to enjoy adding an
-­ably to as many words as possible, hoping to render our sentences
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harmless. Some researchers employ what I call “sleight of word” as a
career-­protection mechanism, just in case, at some point in time, an
idea might be proven wrong. But I don’t believe scientific breakthroughs
are achieved by metaphorically sitting on the fence. On the cyber frontier, we need scientists who are prepared to nail their colors to the mast
and back their own informed instincts. Of course we need evidence-­
based studies over time, but how long can we wait?
Babies are being born, kids are growing up, and lives are being
changed. Society is being reshaped. We need to talk about this now.
In hopes of reaching a wider audience, I have tried to make this
book as practical and straightforward as I know how. I have tried to
make the science comprehensible and spare you too many stats and
studies. For those who share this affinity or are interested in a deeper
dive, there are extensive chapter notes to draw on in the back of the
book. They are written with a broad audience in mind as well.
To keep up with changing technology, and changing human behavior,
my work requires creativity, flexibility, and an ability to juggle a lot of
theoretical constructs. It’s probably a good thing, then, that I haven’t
got the sort of brain that thinks in a linear way. I feel more like a depository of organized chaos, but this helps me identify patterns quickly
and make intuitive leaps. My approach is transdisciplinary by necessity—­
drawing on psychology, sociology, anthropology, computer science,
criminology, and network science. It can cross other academic bounda­
ries too. I find that the different disciplines help to illuminate problems
that are arising, and help to illuminate solutions too.
In the absence of longitudinal studies, I employ logic—­a mixture of
common sense and reasoning—­
then construct plausible arguments
based on a body of knowledge and current observable phenomena and
reports, which I hope will start some meaningful debates about human
behavior online, something I feel is much needed. I have also drawn on
those very special and uniquely human skills: insight and intuition. As
the great robotic scientist Masahiro Mori said, “Do not ignore the
small things.” In science we should not be afraid to listen to ourselves
or to pay attention to the little things. Mori himself was not reluctant
to share his thoughts and suspicions—­about humans and machines,
about artificial intelligence, and about the need to take pleasure, even
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delight, in our intuitions. His approach inspires me. Academics need to
reconsider how we handle behavioral problems that are evolving at the
speed of technology. We need academic first responders.
Quite often, I have leaned on the investigative journalism of publications such as Wired, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and
other reliable sources and legacy media to read emerging frontline reports of anecdotal evidence, see patterns of behavior, and try to make
sense of them. In a field as rapidly evolving as the Internet, and the
technology using it, we need good journalism more than ever.
In the nine chapters to follow, I have arranged material into areas of
special concern—­as well as my own focus. The impact of technology
on human behavior begins at birth and ends at death, so I have chapters that deal with all age groups—­from babies, toddlers, kids, and
teens to adults. In chapters about addiction and compulsive behavior,
I’ve looked at ways that some types of problematic behavior can be
enormously impacted by the online environment. And in a chapter
about the phenomenon of cyberchondria, I’ve argued that the prevalence of the online medical search has resulted in a rise in unnecessary
doctor visits and risky surgical procedures.
The frightening revelations in this book, and the chapter on the
Deep Web, are not included simply for kicks and thrills. The dark hidden corners of the Internet where criminals syndicate and a black market is thriving are things every single person online should know about.
Why? Because more and more young people are being enticed to go
there, driven by a combination of adolescent risk-­taking and curiosity.
Somehow they’ve gotten the wrong impression that it’s perfectly safe in
the Deep Web, even fun. But it isn’t.
My own particular concern is the impact of technology on the developing child. The Internet has opened the world up to our children, yet
it gives the world access to them too. I don’t think most people know
enough about this. There is a great paper in the journal Pediatrics on
the impact of technology on the developing child entitled “The Good,
the Bad, and the Unknown.” It’s that last part, the unknown, that
really bothers me. As the clinical psychologist Michael Seto has said,
“We are living through the largest unregulated social experiment of all

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time—­a generation of youth who have been exposed to extreme content online.”
What will happen to this generation over time? What is the impact
in terms of exposure to the harsher and bleaker aspects of the Internet?

CSI: Cyber
The raid on the house in South Central L.A. was as terrifying as you
might imagine, and I have to confess that as our convoy pulled up outside the target house, I turned to Lt. Grossman to ask if I could stay in
the armored police car rather than move forward with the unit.
“No, Mary, it’s not safe,” she replied.
The armored car wasn’t safe? Wow. I thought, What am I getting
into? The next twenty minutes went by in a blur. There was a lot of
shouting, banging doors, barking orders with guns drawn, handcuffings, and arrests. As an observer, it was both frightening and fascinating. I stood in the background, next to a wall of the living room where
the suspect was apprehended, and I found myself tapping the wall,
hoping it was solid concrete and would protect me from stray bullets.
No bullets were fired, I am happy to report. The raid was a complete
success, the kind of slick professional operation that this LAPD unit
carries out several times a week. The main suspect was taken immediately to a mobile on-­site LAPD computer forensics field truck, known
as “the beast,” where he confessed.
Once it was all over, the police team relaxed and tucked into a hearty
feast of breakfast burritos while I sat quietly, sipping bottled water in a
state of relief and shock, still swaddled in my protective gear. I have
been asked to go out with Lt. Grossman and her team a few times
since, but I assured them that my real-­world frontline policing experience is truly complete. I have the utmost respect for the work carried
out by first responders in law enforcement—­day in, day out—­but participating as an observer in an exercise like this served to reinforce this
respect. And the truth is, I don’t think that I am cut out for frontline
active service in the real world—­but I am happy to serve on the cyber
frontier.

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T he C yber E ffect

Besides, my real job is challenging enough—­finding risks in places
where we feel perfectly safe. Each year has brought more studies in my
field and more discoveries. While conducting my research, I have had a
chance to meet and speak with leaders in law enforcement and policy
makers in government around the world, and have engaged as an academic with Europol, INTERPOL, the FBI, and the White House. In
2012, supported by a great mentor and colleague, Professor Ciaran
O’Boyle, I founded the CyberPsychology Research Centre in Dublin,
now an international network designed to support and nurture cuttingedge research projects, and most recently found myself spending a
good bit of time in Hollywood, working on the television show CSI:
Cyber, inspired by my work. In the show, Patricia Arquette plays Avery
Ryan, a special agent in the FBI Cyber Crime unit who is tasked with
solving high-­octane crimes that “start in the mind, live online, and play
out into the real world.” That describes my work perfectly.

Factoring the Human
Earlier in this prologue I asserted my view that the Internet is distinct
from the so-­called real world, but that I don’t mean to suggest that
what happens there isn’t real. And in terms of human behavior, what
happens online is a little like one of those evolving flu viruses or Ebola.
Once behavior mutates in cyberspace, where a significant number of
people participate, it can double back around and become a norm in
everyday life, something I call cyber-­migration. This means that the
implications of the online experience and environment are ever evolving and profound, and impact us all—­no matter where we live or spend
time.
When I studied psychology as an undergraduate, we used to say that
the problem with the field was that for too long it had “lived on a diet
of white mice and college student surveys.” Something similar can be
said of technology: For too long it has lived on a diet of data, devices,
and tech experts. Now it’s time to turn our focus to the greater socio-­
technological implications. How have these advancements changed
human behavior and society? It is time to consider that awkward entity, Homo sapiens, whose thumbs are too big for cellphone keypads,
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whose bodies are too clumsily shaped for wearable technology design,
and whose memory is too weak to retain multiple ten-­digit passwords.
In other words, it’s time to factor in the human. Sometimes our excitement about technology has prevented us from seeing the bigger picture.
In the midst of the human migration to cyberspace, it is important
to examine what’s behind us, where we are now, and what lies ahead.
Like travelers heading off on an adventure, we need to be careful not
to rush too quickly out the door without making sure we are carrying
things we need for the journey we’re undertaking. There are some important things, aspects of human life that have served us well for centuries and are crucial to our survival, that we can’t afford to lose or
abandon on this journey. This is where the discipline of cyberpsychology can be invaluable, delivering insight at the intersection of humans
and technology. My hope for this book is to do just that.